Living History: Retracing the Evolution of the PC and PC Magazine

In 1982, a year of great promise for the budding personal computing market, PC Magazine published its premier issue. A machine introduced by IBM the year before had sent the market soaring into unforseen territory. Over the next 20 years, PC Magazine chronicled the movements of this constantly evolving market and watched as the personal computer made its way from the basements of hobbyists to the business offices and living rooms of mainstream America. Editor-in-chief Michael J. Miller looks back on the histroy of this amazing invention.

The Apple Macintosh made most of the computer industry realize that the graphical user interface was inevitable, though it wouldn't become a major factor for most people for a long time to come. Nevertheless, it immediately triggered a race among PC companies to create the user interface of the future.

One of the first new attempts was IBM's TopView. Though it was only character-based, the interface allowed multiple programs to run on-screen at once. But TopView ultimately failed because of its compatibility problems; developers often needed to adapt their programs to work on it. And by this time, users had realized that compatibility was the key to "standard" computing, so they stayed away.

Microsoft Windows would later triumph, but in those days, the OS was merely one more contender. Microsoft described Windows 1.0 early on as a window manager and a graphic display interface. It looked like the early version of Microsoft Word for DOS, with a single list of commands on the bottom of the screen, instead of several pull-down menus. The windows could not overlap but instead stacked as tiles. Still, the basics were there, including a mouse used for selecting menu items, cut-and-paste capability, and a list of 30 hardware companies that would support it. Most companies that made DOS-compatible hardware were on that list, with one notable exception: IBM.

Windows also required a bitmapped display (which was not yet a standard), 192K of RAM, and two floppy disk drives. No hard drive was required.

By the time Windows finally shipped in 1985, two years after it had been announced, its recommended requirements included a hard drive and 512K of RAM. It had evolved to include pull-down menus as well as the Windows Write and Windows Paint applications. But it still didn't take off, mainly because there weren't many Windows applications available, although the first PC version of the desktop publishing system Adobe PageMaker followed in late 1986.

Other attempts at a graphical user interface included Digital Research's GEM, which became best known as the environment used by desktop publishing system Ventura Publisher. VisiCorp, publisher of the VisiCalc spreadsheet, had one last try with an interface called VisiOn, which didn't gain much support.

Ultimately, the most successful attempt of the era may have come from Quarterdeck, a small start-up based in Santa Monica, California. In 1983, Quarterdeck proposed a complicated integrating environment manager called DESQ. In 1985, the program was reintroduced in a stripped-down version, called DESQview, that was compatible with TopView. Many power users ended up running that for years as their multitasking windowing system.

Interface development wasn't the only area making headway during this period; technology for PC networks and communications was advancing as well. Novell had introduced NetWare in 1983, which was becoming a corporate standard for PC networks. Competition grew among network designs: Ethernet, which was invented in the late 1970s, was just beginning to receive corporate acceptance. IBM was fighting back with its own unique standard, Token Ring, which came out in late 1985. Slowly, applications that took advantage of networking were becoming more popular. For dial-up networking, 2,400-bps modems were taking off. And PC Magazine had its first start in the online world, unleashing the Interactive Reader Service bulletin board in July 1985. The response to the bulletin board was overwhelming. In fact, demand for one of PC Magazine's famous utility programs caused a phone shutdown in southern California; readers had dialed in to download the program after reading about it in an issue.

On the hardware front, Intel introduced the 16-MHz 80386 processor in 1985, although it didn't make its way into IBM-compatible systems immediately. Perhaps companies were waiting for IBM to make the first move, but IBM had other plans. So Advanced Logic Research (ALR) and Compaq made the leap by introducing the first 386-based PCs in September 1986.

The leap paid off. Compaq's 386 entry defined a new standard for the industry. Suddenly other computer companies were giving IBM a run for its money. "IBM computing" was no longer the catch phrase of the era; it was "PC compatible." To mark this milestone, PC Magazine changed its tagline from "The Independent Guide to IBM Personal Computers" to "The Independent Guide to IBM-Standard Personal Computing."

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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